


if this is fate

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, F/M, Fate, First Time, Fluff, Future Fic, Hive, Kree blood, Missing Scene, POV Alternating, Romance, skoulsonfest2k16redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 09:20:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7527157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy learns to embrace fate.</p>
<p>Written for the Skoulson RomFest 2k16 Redux - prompt: "it's in our blood"</p>
            </blockquote>





	if this is fate

She is already up and about when he comes back, offering herself up to some tests in the lab. She looks smaller, like the clothes Coulson has seen her in a hundred times are suddenly the wrong size.

“I wanted to be here when you woke up but…” he makes a grimace, feeling he made a mistake leaving her side.

Skye shakes her head. “You had to escort an Asgardian warrior and a rogue Kree,” she says. “I get it.”

“How are you feeling?” he asks, looking down at the tubes with her blood, ready to be tested. He hopes Simmons is not working her too hard - he gets the need to know what her condition is actually doing to her, but Coulson thinks she looks like she could use a break. She hasn’t really gotten one since before San Juan.

“I’m fine,” she tells him. “Did Lady Sif mention anything else about… this?”

Coulson sighs. He knows she is asking if he has a way to fix this, take whatever the temple put inside her away. He doesn’t. He feels powerless.

“No, Skye, I’m sorry.” She nods, dropping her head only barely so. “She just warned me about the decision I was making.”

“About keeping me here? Because I’m dangerous.”

He feels the impulse to tell her she’s not dangerous, she’s not a weapon or whatever else that Kree said about her. He feels the impulse to take her in his arms and comfort her. He’s not sure why he doesn’t.

“Because it might be part of some grand plan,” he says, feeling ridiculous for even bringing it up. It’s so absurd. “And that maybe we can’t fight against what’s already decided.”

Skye seems to take it seriously, looking very intently at him for a moment, and then looking away, distractedly scratching her shoulder - Coulson guesses it must still hurt from the ICER (that was a really point blank shot) and he winces in sympathy.

“Because you have that stuff in your blood and it’s the thing that brought you back to life and when you came back you… met me?” she says. Coulson widens his eyes. It sounds a lot like what May tried to tell him. “It’s not the first time I’ve thought about this.”

“It’s not?”

“As I started to understand what had happened to me and wanted to tell you - I’m so sorry,” she bites her bottom lip, “I know I should have told you.”

“You were scared, everyone understands.”

“I’m not so sure everyone does,” she shrugs. When he came back they told him Skye had moved her things into the Bus, into the cell. It made sense - the vibranium alloy on the walls, and it made sense to him that she made that call while he and May were still away. He would have tried to stop her, possibly, and Skye didn’t need to be stopped right now.

“In time,” he says, offering a useless platitude. He knows his team, he knows they would die for Skye, whether they think she has become a monster or not.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about that? The Kree blood inside you making you carve a map that led me to the place I got this…” she looks down at her hands, like she’s not sure what to call what happened to her. “These powers. The place I was _supposed_ to go to all along. At least according to Raina and my dad, at least.”

Coulson swallows. Mack said that too. He’s been trying not to think about it. He’s been too busy, too heartbroken over Trip. Skye doesn’t know Coulson himself went down to the tunnels, chasing her, and could have died down there. Lady Sif’s words made him think about that detail, but now he has to push it out of his mind, for Skye’s sake. She’s dealing with enough guilt right now.

“I think you’d better rest now,” he says. “You can finish the tests later.”

He wraps his fingers gently around her arm, giving her a bit of a squeeze for encouragement. Skye looks at his hand, eye blown up, like she can barely believe he would touch her - a weapon, an aberration - and it makes Coulson squeeze harder.

 

+

 

There should be no fear in here, no confusion in her mind anymore. While Daisy watches her blood travelling through the IV she tries to push those thoughts away, because they shouldn’t be there anymore. She is perfect now. She is completely happy now.

This apprehension should not be within her anymore. She feels tainted. 

But he tells her not to worry, he tells her he can see everything inside her.

“Even if I wasn’t part of you, Grant Ward knows about the Kree blood in Coulson, so I would know.”

“I wasn’t hiding anything from you,” she says in a panic, terrified of having offended him, terrified that she might have ruined this and he will take this joy away from her. She can’t even conceive the idea that she might lose this - this connection to him - she knows she would lose her mind if that ever happens.

“I know,” he says. She still finds it strange to be looking into Grant Ward’s face and feel nothing but joy.

“I wanted to be the one to do this for you,” Daisy says. It’s an honor. Her blood, the thing that could help him realize his plan. How could she not want this? She wants it so much. She told to start the blood transfusion right away, and he agreed.

He cocks his head to one side, studying her. He is so wonderfully alien and when he looks at her it’s like he’s really looking through her and Daisy feels like she is nothing, a speck of dust, a tiny part of the joy, and finally she doesn’t have to be just herself anymore. Daisy can’t hide anything - not that she wants to, but she’s ashamed, because how can he be staring at her when he is so perfect and she is so flawed?

“It’s not just that,” he says, reading right into her. “ _Coulson_. You want to protect him. And you didn’t want to force him.”

“It’s not right,” she tells him. She wants Coulson to be part of this, to feel at peace like her. If anyone deserves to feel such joy it’s Coulson. It seems unfair to be in a world where someone like her gets the chance to experience this perfect happiness, and someone like Coulson, so good, so deserving, is left out of it. Daisy wants this for everybody, not just Inhumans. “They don’t understand what it means to be us. They will.”

“Very well,” he says, patting her hand, filling her with more joy, joy, joy.

Giving all that blood is starting to make her feel dizzy. But she smiles, unconcerned, because if he wants her to do this, if he lets her do this for him, it doesn’t matter. If it’s her destiny to die for this, then it’s okay, too. As long as it’s what he wants. What he wants from her.

 

+

 

“What is it about this woman that you have to chase her like this?” Talbot asks.

It’s almost friendly in a way it hasn’t been since he became Director, and Coulson’s superior.

But it makes him remember another question, Gonzalez asked it a long time ago, about why he went down the Kree temple, about the idea that Daisy might have _dragged_ him. It’s not like it’s the first time he has faced questions about his dedication to Daisy. His go-to reply is about responsibility, about how he was the one to bring her into SHIELD in the first place. He’s probably made himself believe it, too, through repetition.

He’s not stupid or naive, he knows how it sounds and looks - his office plastered with pictures of a young, beautiful woman he’s desperate to find. He’s heard people whispering when he walks by. 

Talbot makes an exasperated face at him, like he’s really trying to help him, like he’s a friend trying to pull Coulson back from a bad influence. It’s enough to make him smile. Daisy, a bad influence? Gonzalez was wrong: he was the one who dragged her to the temple, not the other way around.

 

+

 

“You always manage to find me,” Daisy says as they prop each other against the wall, slipping far from danger. She means it as an accusation but Coulson smirks.

“Yeah, and it’s a good thing I did today, too.”

He clears the path and they find an empty storage room to take cover for a moment. Dropping to their knees, exhausted from the fight, their eyes look for injuries before their brains can process they are doing that.

Daisy frowns at him, his presence (his worry, his desperation), again puncturing the perfect solitude she had wrapped herself in. But what if there’s a reason for it?

“No, really. How do you always find me?” she asks again, truly wondering for the first time, because it was too scary to contemplate before. “Sometimes even when I’m trying my best.”

They’ve done this dance enough times. Coulson always ends up catching up with her. Sometimes it takes him quite a while, but he does. And Daisy hadn’t wanted to think too much about it - she didn’t want to think too much about him - but now she’s ready to.

“Don’t sound so surprised, I’m a good agent.”

“No, you’re a _great_ agent,” she corrects and Coulson can’t help but smile. “That’s not it.”

He stops looking at the door, listening for the steps of the enemy and turns towards her, giving her his full attention. It’s the first time they have properly talked in months.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“My people believe we fit into a plan,” Daisy says.

Coulson nods. He heard something like that from Lincoln. He hadn’t liked it then and he’s not sure he likes it now.

“You believe that?”

“I don’t know,” she admits and Coulson has missed this, he has missed talking to Daisy, hearing her thoughts on big, important things, he’s missed it so much. “but it’s more than that. It’s something I thought about this before. Our connection.”

“Our connection? Between us?”

She nods.

He can’t believe she wants to have this conversation _now_ , with one of the Watchdogs’ deadliest squads chasing after her.

“The Kree blood?”

“Yes,” Daisy replies.

“You think that’s how I find you?” His eyes widen. “I refuse to believe that.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to believe that I just know you well.”

Daisy touches his face. There’s something endearing in Coulson wanting their connection to be completely pure. She knew complete purity once. It was evil and made her hurt the people she loved. She is okay with incompleteness for the rest of her life. If it means it’s real, if it means she doesn’t have to hurt anyone for it.

“Maybe fate means that you were meant to know me so well,” she says.

Coulson finds it cryptic, and enticing, like she is trying to tell him some sort of secret no one else knows. But he soon forgets about it, has to, because the bullets start flying next door and finding a way to get Daisy to safety is more important than philosophy.

 

+

 

“You still believe this is fate?” Coulson asks her after he is finished kissing her for the first time.

He cups her face in his hands, calloused, real. _Real_. Daisy sighs in relief.

“For me maybe it is,” she says, and _maybe_ is the important part because how can she ever be sure about anything ever again? But if that’s enough for Coulson… if she is enough for him… And he makes her feel like she is enough.

He grabs her by the waist and pushes her gently against the bed, like he understands instinctively that Daisy needs to not have to make decisions for a while. If this is fate maybe it can compete with what she once had, with the fake version of bliss.

Coulson slips her out of her jeans carefully, dropping kisses along the inside of her thigh. His peripheral vision is full of her - the newspaper clippings he’s been collecting, the stills from security feeds, her SHIELD file, all over his small room.

Daisy starts running her fingers through his short hair, as Coulson buries his head between her legs, as waves of pleasure start to hit her, slowly, quietly. She smiles to herself. It is still painful to be out of the joy of belonging, but this is, in its own humble way, a kind of belonging.

Maybe she is right, Coulson thinks as he slides up her body, pulling off his own clothes as Daisy recovers from her orgasm. Maybe it was the blood, why he was meant to meet her in the first place. Maybe that was fine, a little push. But he finds it impossible to believe that some sort of cosmic conspiracy could manage to put all these feelings inside him. It’s Daisy, no one would need any extra help to fall in love with her. It’s all her.

“Okay?” he asks, before pushing inside.

She nods, touching his forehead, his cheeks, his neck again, greedy in a way she hasn’t let herself feel since before Hive.

She remembers the dream she had, about her and Coulson being the last people on Earth. She smiles, realizing maybe the dream was more straightforward than she thought. Maybe all this was more straightforward than she thought. Meeting Coulson, feeling _this_.

Coulson starts playing with the locks of her hair splayed on the pillow, trying to distract himself so this won’t be over too soon, kissing her shoulder, her collarbone, barely moving inside her.

“If this is fate,” he tells her, his voice full of emotion and doubt. “Then I guess… I’m grateful.”

No one had ever told her something like that before, that they should be grateful for finding her. His words, the way he has always looked at her, making her feel like she’s earned it. 

And maybe that’s how it’s supposed to go - what it means to be human (or Inhuman, because she’s both). She knows she will never be as close to another being as she was to Hive and the others when they were one, and she is still mourning that loss, will always mourn that loss, but she feels like this is how it’s really meant to be. The way Coulson looks at her. It’s not because they are one and have found perfect completion. It’s because she is Daisy and he loves her. It’s not about anyone or anything but her. Hive could have never make her feel this way.

She wraps her fingers around Coulson’s nape.

“Well, I’m grateful,” she tells him, pulling him closer.

He presses a smile against her mouth. What was he so afraid of? Fate? Well, it turns out it’s not that bad.


End file.
